Many advances have their slop version, look at any trend which began as broadly positive and became infested with a tacky parade of bandwagon pretenders.

AI is just the next example, and the internet is particularly troublesome at filtering up the most tacky.

Always remember the broadly positive aspects remain, they're simply obscured by dusty clouds from the bandwagon.

Use tools to expand your capability.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest FDR set up Truman, it's well documented he kept Truman in the dark until he died.

Hey, at least it lowers expectations enough that Linux Desktop is good enough with the latest KDE Plasma and to a some extent Gnome.

Apple lost it's broken but incessant leader, and Tim Cook is lets' face it a chair warmer in comparison.

Say what you want, but the disillusionment is sat there, in your view, or you simply never knew Apple when it was "good".

Hey, maybe people will actually understand why proprietary software is, if not immoral, it's the on-ramp for mass control and manipulation that makes the TV central broadcast propaganda soup era, nothing at all in comparison to the manipulation of people by software.

That would be really impressive levels of psychopathy.

tl'dr later models generally improve on earlier ones. (although "you can't please all the people all the time" applies)

Yes. They iterate over time.

As has the US Constitution which from its very outset was a dynamic document put forward with the stern advice to attend to it as time passes lest a despot put it aside.

I think you nailed the drive behind my ~3 decades of Emacs use: "I can get at all the text" (possibly above the customization/automation benefits despite this being the "advanced" pov above "it's just a text editor isn't it?"

I remember a 2019 "initiative" at a fairly large international insurance corporation:

"Everyone should code"

This led to a flood of projects trying to get pitched to software, and it also crashed headlong into COVID / furloughs.

That entire C-suite team have been churned, that's how good that idea was.

a torrent of slow claps for Mitt "Say it when it's too late to help" Romney... that's the hallmark of this guy's political contribution.

Some of the older heads here are 100% with you, the notes and comments in this thread should be clear enough indication of that.

But you're right, tools that make short work of ridiculous incantations, 100% good.

We don't sit around trying to re-write arithmetic, but apparently not knowing how to do git pull --rebase is a crime to these smart folks, who don't seem to realize they know very little about getting sh!t done.

United Gangsters of America it seems ... since the people have no say, just a moron with too much luck, too much power, not enough consequences.

They'll come? and the fact that's a question shows American Justice has been absent for quite some time.